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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005

Autechre

The often derided genre label "intelligent dance music" was coined to lend critical legitimacy to a kind of nonmelodic techno that seemed willfully avant garde and devoid of style. In fact, considering how often flagship IDM artists like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada flouted 4/4 time signatures, calling...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 29, 2005

Former Takarazuka star comes back in Fuji's "Rikon Bengoshi 2" and more

Former Takarazuka (all-female musical) star Yuki Amami returns as attorney Takako Mamiya in "Rikon Bengoshi 2 (Divorce Lawyer 2)" (Fuji TV, Tuesday, 9 p.m.). In this week's episode, a young woman named Mari comes to Takako's office for advice.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 28, 2005

Learn Japanese through the Conditioned Response Method

After the success of my first published book, "Guidebook to Japan: What the other guidebooks won't tell you," I am now ready to start my second book, "Learning Japanese: What the textbooks won't tell you." Allow me to share with you the Conditioned Response Method (CRM). With this method, you will be...
BUSINESS
May 28, 2005

FSA to test new system to rate banks

The Financial Services Agency will start a new bank rating system in July that will allow regular bank inspections to be used more flexibly, agency officials said Friday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 25, 2005

Designs to refresh the spirit

Some Westerners, when faced with Oriental creativity, have a tendency to gush. Instead of taking a calm, rational, inquisitive point of view, they tend to ascribe the aesthetic effect of what they see to some mysterious, spiritual force -- whether they call it Zen, Tao, yin and yang -- something they...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 22, 2005

Fuji TV dramatizes Naoki Prize winning novel "Kuchu Buranko" and more

This week's "Friday Entertainment" special (Fuji TV, 9 p.m.) is a dramatization of the 131st winner of the Naoki Prize for Literature, Hideo Okura's novel "Kuchu Buranko (Flying Trapeze)."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 22, 2005

Joe Lovano

Saxophonist Joe Lovano knows just how to rough up a bop number, wail like a bird of prey and keep each and every note right on target. Too young to have fully joined the free jazz movement and too old to be a slick self-promoter, Lovano relies instead on straight-on integrity. He knows people don't come...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 21, 2005

Horton hears a Who in 'Dare-mura'

I am going to share something with you today that you must keep an absolute secret. You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you, especially not the police.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 18, 2005

A woman scorned

The continuing shock appeal of "Medea" by Euripides (480-406 B.C.), is not simply due to its dramatization of infanticide and the rage of a woman who has been scorned by her lover, but also because it touches on other universal themes such as the perennial position of underdogs in society, and how they...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
May 17, 2005

Nagashima ready to face baseball fans

Former Yomiuri Giants manager and Japanese baseball icon Shigeo Nagashima has indicated that he will soon make his first public appearance since suffering a stroke in March last year.
BUSINESS
May 14, 2005

'Indoor dogs' on rise as small pets become part of the family

"Beware of Dog" signs are becoming increasingly rare as a growing number of people choose to keep their pets inside with them and not outside to guard the house.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 12, 2005

Middle-aged men seek reconciliation with wives

Oh boy. It's happened at last: the junai (pure love) boom of last year that changed even the behavioral patterns of Sentagai no Jyoshikousei (the high school girls of Center-Gai, Shibuya) has reached the last and most difficult segment of the Japanese populace: the over-45 salaryman.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 4, 2005

Living tradition of court doll-making celebrated

"Gosho Ningyo Court Dolls and Paintings of the Modern Era,' currently at the Seikado Bunko Art Museum and coinciding with Golden Week, sets out to display the decorative flourishes and innovations of the late 19th century (late Edo and Meiji periods) through to the early 20th century. It was a time when,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Coating the truth to make fiction

THE COAT THAT COVERS HIM AND OTHER STORIES, by Michael Hoffman. Authorhouse, 2004, 632 pp., 2,940 yen (paper). Japan, having contrived the image of itself as a manifestly gentle society, the spiritual home of garden gnomes and all that is cute and cuddly, is now awakening to a manifestly dysfunctional...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Sexual, visual politics: from shunga to shojo

GENDER AND POWER IN THE JAPANESE VISUAL FIELD, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2003, 292 pp., 7 color plates, 106 b/w illustrations, $36.00 (cloth). The original impetus for this interesting volume came during the 1994 Kyoto Conference...
Japan Times
Features
May 1, 2005

Heading for the stars on high

KONA, Hawaii -- The big white 4WD driven by Yasuhiro Nishida left the hotel in Kohala Coast at 2:50 p.m. with 13 people on board. It was another windy afternoon on the west coast of the island of Hawaii -- "the Big Island," as this, the largest and youngest in the Hawaiian chain, is known.
CULTURE / Music
May 1, 2005

Kurt Rosenwinkel: "Deep Song"

Kurt Rosenwinkel plays guitar with a fluid, mellow voice all his own. On his sixth outing, "Deep Song," he is joined by a stellar quartet, including saxophonist Joshua Redman and pianist Brad Mehldau, who enhance Rosenwinkel's cool, cerebral compositions to great effect.
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2005

Police launch major probe into Amagasaki train crash

Driver training -- Page 2
BUSINESS
Apr 28, 2005

Japanese find life tough in foreign securities firms

Foreign securities companies may be steadily gaining a foothold in Japan, but many of the Japanese now working for them have a tough time compared with when they used to work at domestic commercial banks and securities firms.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 27, 2005

Soft-focus images to unsettle us

The first Yokohama Triennale, held back in 2001, was a critical success, and so I was delighted to hear that the second incarnation of the contemporary art extravaganza has been set for September.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 24, 2005

It's not cartoons, it's education

JAPANESE THE MANGA WAY: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar & Structure, By Wayne P. Lammers. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2005, 312 pp., 500 b/w illustrations, $24.95 (paper). Wayne Lammers is among the best of the younger translators of Japanese to English. He has rendered such classical texts as Fujiwara...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 24, 2005

Canadian indie scene keeps it together

When the Canadian music collective known as Broken Social Scene arrives in Tokyo next month, they'll be bringing a few members of their family tree along. Found on the group's Web site, the "tree" is actually 40-plus band and artist names scrawled on a paper bag and connected by the squiggly white lines....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Apr 22, 2005

Trilogy in a triangle

In general, pre-bubble nightlife in Tokyo was rather dull. In the early 1980s, a Saturday night out in Shinjuku or Roppongi meant jockeying for space in a crowded disco with packs of Japanese intent on line dancing in front of mirrors. There were a few alternative bars scattered in and around Aoyama,...
JAPAN
Apr 21, 2005

Pneumonia kills famed writer Niwa at age 100

Veteran novelist Fumio Niwa, whose works depicted modern life and historic Buddhist monks, died of pneumonia early Wednesday morning at his home in Musashino, western Tokyo, his family said. He was 100.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Apr 20, 2005

The Koreans who potted in Kyushu

Japan has long been fascinated with outside influences, and voraciously absorbs them in order to create something totally unique. This can be found in almost all aspects of Japanese industry and culture -- and it is nowhere more apparent than in the pottery born in Kyushu. Of course, ancient kilns dating...
JAPAN
Apr 19, 2005

History not key issue: Chinese in Japan

OSAKA -- The current tensions between Japan and China have less to do with history textbooks and more to do with a long-term political and economic rivalry, according to some knowledgeable Chinese living in Japan.
COMMUNITY / LIFELINES
Apr 19, 2005

Pensions, easy credit, freecycling and dogs

Lump Sum payments Following on from last week's Zeit Gist article on the insurance probe involving Japan's eikaiwa, Rob has a question on pension refunds.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?